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the dancing cobras

Every writer on assignment ends up accruing tales that don’t fit the purpose — but that are still worth telling. Such is the inspiration behind the new magazine Off Assignment, where “the detour is the story.” I just had the pleasure of writing a piece for their Letter to a Stranger column, inspired by Pico Iyer’s quote: “…And writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”

Mine tells of a candlelit evening in South Asia and a man with a half-century-old story to tell about when he saw the cobras dance…